The
Kodak Theatre
opened in late 2001, the crown jewel of the giant Hollywood
& Highland project, and of the Hollywood renaissance in general.

It was built to be the permanent
home of the annual Academy Awards show, located, as it is, right across
the street from the hotel (the Hollywood
Roosevelt) where the very first Oscar
Night took place, and a stone's throw from the fabulous footprints
at Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

After years of roaming from
one location to another (the Shrine,
the Music Center, even Grauman's itself),
the Oscars have finally come home to Hollywood to stay.

And it is a dazzling home,
with three balcony levels and twenty opera boxes to lend a somewhat European
flourish to the surroundings.

Built at a cost of $94 million,
this 136,000 square foot theatre, with 3,400 seats, was custom-designed
for the special needs of Oscar Night and other live TV broadcasts.

The theatre is set back from
the Boulevard, so that when the stars arrive in their limos on Oscar night,
they walk north through the towering entrance portal, up "Awards Walk"
(past backlit glass panels etched with the titles of previous Best Pictures),
and up stairs into the theatre's four-story lobby, where they will find
26 giant-size photographic images (on clear plexiglass) of Oscar winners
such as Brando, Grace Kelly, Jack Nicholson and Julia Roberts.

Inside the theatre, there is
even a special ring of seats for Oscar nominees, next to the orchestra
pit, to make it easy for the winners to reach the 120 foot wide stage.
And
after they give their acceptance speeches, the Oscar winners will follow
the "Winners Walk," a direct path from the stage to the special
press room for those post-Oscar interviews.

The theatre is sponsored by
the Kodak Company, which paid a record $75 million to have its name emblazoned
on the new auditorium. That's certainly appropriate. Kodak has a Hollywood
history of its own: the company has won eight Academy Awards over the years,
and for 80 straight years (as of 2008), every single Oscar-winning movie
has been produced on Kodak film.

Even though the theatre was
custom-designed for Oscar Night, the Motion Picture Academy doesn't own
the theatre, they simply rent the facility for the Big Event.

So the challenge was what to
do with the theatre for the rest of the year, between Oscar Nights.

Their first non-Oscar bookings
were for the American Ballet Theatre's "The Nutcracker" (for
the 2001 Christmas season), followed by the Broadway hit musical "The
Full Monty".

Over
the following six years, the theatre played host to a number of events,
including concerts by Celine Dion, Barbra Streisand, Prince,
the Dixie Chicks, Barry Manilow, Alicia Keys, Stevie Wonder,
Harry Connick, Jr., Elvis Costello, Melissa Etheridge, TV shows
(such as the "American Idol" finals), and other awards shows
(such as the Daytime Emmys, ESPY Awards, BET Awards, and AFI
Lifetime Achievement Awards to Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep and George Lucas).

But L.A. proved to be a very
competitive market when it came to booking big events in between Oscar
Nights.

Then
the brand new Nokia Theatre entered the
picture, meaning that booking top performers would be even more difficult.

In
what was probably a wise move, the Kodak shifted gears in late 2007. They
announced that they had signed a 10-year, $100 million deal for the
ever-popular Cirque du Soleil
to become a permanent tenant at the theatre. Cirque has created a brand
new, Hollywood-themed show, named "IRIS", which will run year-round at the Kodak, presenting
eight shows a week (except during Oscar month, of course).

(Given how well the Cirque
shows have done in Vegas and elsewhere, I expect the tourist crowds who
flock to Hollywood & Highland will love it.)

For visitors who would like
to see the inside of the theatre today (without paying to see IRIS),
the Kodak is now offering a 30-minute guided
tour. They will show you the theatre interior,
let you sit where the stars sit, show you the exclusive VIP room where
the stars mingle - they'll even let you see one of the Oscar statuettes
won by Kodak. The public guided tours are offered seven days a week, every
half hour, from 10:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the Summer, and until 2:30 p.m.
the rest of the year. Tickets for the Kodak Theatre tours can be purchased
at Kodak Theatre box office for $15 ($10 for kids).

Parking:The Hollywood & Highland center offers large
parking garages, accessible from Highland Avenue and Orange Avenue. Parking
rates are $2.00 for up to 4 hours with validation ; $1.00 for every
20 minutes thereafter. Daily maximum $10.00. (Valet parking is available
for an additional $5.)

Getting
there:The
theatre is part of the Hollywood & Highland center, which is located
on the northwest corner of Hollywood Blvd and Highland Avenue in the heart
of Hollywood. It is right across the street from the El Capitan
Theatre and immediately east of Grauman's
Chinese Theatre.

This webpage is not associated with any business
described in the article above, and does not constitute an
endorsement of this or any other business. The photos of celebrities on
this page also do not constitute
endorsements by them of any kind, and are used by the author solely to
illustrate this online article.(Click here to read
other disclaimers)